What does Zimbra have against OpenSUSE

[mmorse]

Bill:

Moving ZCS to Another Server » Zimbra :: Blog (note the ./install.sh -s of step 3)

ZCS-to-ZCS Migrations » Zimbra :: Blog

[Bill Brock]

If my decision is to go proprietary you are the one person I will miss the most from this forum. Your links look promising however. I've bookmarked them to study.

[tgx]

Originally Posted by Bill Brock

If my decision is to go proprietary you are the one person I will miss the most from this forum. Your links look promising however. I've bookmarked them to study.

I also find this quite disheartening and this statement:

Open SuSE is no longer giving them a return. Too few downloads, too few contributions from Open SuSE users to the community....

really ticks me off. OpenSuSE is as rock solid as a community distro can come. A real shame, but Zimbra is managing to live up to all the fears I had about deploying it. It claims to be open source but definitely doesn't live up to the spirit of it. I feel your pain Bill, maybe it's time to %$#can the whole mess. I'm quite tired of these shenanigans from mixed source vendors.

[Bill Brock]

But I've finally settled down to knowing I have some hard decisions to make and a buttload of work no matter what decision I make. Had I stuck with my proprietary solution I was originally using this would not be the case.

I gave FOSS a shot and it has been very costly time wise. With 400 desktops, 100 branch offices plus a home office to manage I don't have the time to put forth managing a product that will be dropping support for distro's they supported in the past.

Mike's links to migration are interesting and I'll probably run with the version of Zimbra I have now until I make a decision. Then again, with the number of bugs that keep popping up with each release, and they appear to be numerous, I haven't upgraded in a while and maybe 6 will be so buggy that I don't wabt to go there anyway.

Who knows. The whole situation is frustrating.

[raj]

Originally Posted by Bill Brock

..I'll probably migrate back to 602Lan or take a look at Merak...

Just to let you know you don’t want to go with Merak..i have its full license bought few years back and the thing crapped out 24x7..Wasted the money and time and had to move everything back to my old solution "Imail" in those days.
..So hurt by Merak and its nightmares that when i see its name i like to raise the Red-flag.

Zimbra migration between different OS's is not hard at all..dont even require 10 min of downtime (do require extra hardware till migration is happening) have moved lots of servers from Fedora to CentOS5 no issues at all.

I understand the pain..but everything has EOL..someday
But there is a clear option to move to next version and migration of Zimbra is simple.

Raj

[mmorse]

Brock: You can hit me up personally to help with migration - anytime.

Before someone says 'wait I need brand new hardware now?' just wanted to point out that you don't always need extra servers, as Raj stated it's a matter of downtime preference.

Examples:
-Old hardware > new hardware (with very minimal downtime)
-Old os > vm/temp server for interim > new os on old hardware (designed to get back on the same hardware with moderate downtime)
-Old os > storage somewhere > new os (a little more downtime if you have a window)
Either of these using any migration method.

Ok, so we have these same discussions whenever a platform is discontinued. This one boils down to the fact that we didn't give far enough warning (for long term planning time) and feedback input when we were looking to minimize the list. And for that we apologize profusely.

The code is out there for anyone to build from. Is it a death sentence for a platform when we stop producing binaries for it? No. Because if deep down it's "a rock star operating system" that everyone adopts in the field, it'll be back as a official build. Loosely it's the law of averages: If an OS has certain features that make it stand above other offerings, it will either be in demand by enough people to warrant it's return, or that feature will be incorporated into other leading distros. Infact that's the best part about the linux kernel being open source; if a platform starts ignoring requested enhancements another rises to fill the void. The others can choose to survive by adapting, or fall by the wayside. Either way you win.

No that's not an attack on OpenSUSE - I've run it & love it - but using that concept relative to Zimbra: When a platform is perceived as valued on one level or another people will make Community builds of ZCS for it. When more popular still there will FOSS builds, and if enough customers say "hey we want this" it turns into an NE release. That last hurdle may seem extremely daunting because it's hard to see just how many requests we weigh against other factors, and we can't always put the bottom line numbers out there publicly.

I'd like to say download and install reporting stats be damned, but no one truly is able to in today's market. There are entire companies devoted to ROI & analysis: television ad effectiveness, the amount of sugar in soft drinks for best enjoyment, comparisons of peanut butter vs Nutella sales in Italy. Of course the reply is "Zimbra should help kick start all of these distros into popularity with official ZCS releases" and trust me I always argue for more platforms, as I think it's worthwhile to say 'we can' and have a wide range of choices provided directly by us to help spread adoption of Zimbra. The important opposing argument of course is the time and money to maintain them, in both technical aspects and human overhead for both engineering, QA, and sometimes support. Reducing variables is also one of those things that leads into the quality discussion on the other thread. As we push the boundaries of collaboration sometimes 'more can be better' while other times 'less is more'. Everyone has to make decisions daily about allocation of resources, whether it be an NCO in the military to a CFO in a corporate environment. That doesn't come easily, which it why 'compromise' is never listed near anyone's definition for 'fun'!

[Bill Brock]

Thanks. this forum has some good moderators but you are a cut above.

And raj, I have a good friend with Merak and 500 users that has no problems with it.

[tgx]

Originally Posted by mmorse

The code is out there for anyone to build from. Is it a death sentence for a platform when we stop producing binaries for it? No. Because if deep down it's "a rock star operating system" that everyone adopts in the field, it'll be back as a official build.
!

Fundamentally this is preposterous. Even if you have only 40 customers, the size of Brock's and you are non-chalant about supporting it one year and not the next, that's no way to run a project...at all. Bare minimum, you should be supporting tier 1 distros regardless of the download numbers. You're still a growing product for cripes sake. Now is not the time to be pigeon-holing yourself to certain distros.

If I was more saavy, I'd download and build the source but the skills to do so are not mine. I can compile my own VMware kernel because they make it easy to do. I wouldn't know where to begin with Zimbra.

I really hope that Zimbra reconsiders, you certainly aren't making any friends with these moves. Of course it it's just business to you and not community then I guess that doesn't matter either.

PS. I'd suggest removing SuSE from your downloads section NOW before you sucker someone else into installing it.

[Jbrabander]

Originally Posted by tgx

Bare minimum, you should be supporting tier 1 distros regardless of the download numbers.

To go out on a limb, should Ford continue to make OEM parts for the Model T? People still own and drive Model Ts after all these years. Should Microsoft keep supporting Windows 98 just because some people still use it? Or are the resources better spent on more current products?

I understand what you're asking for. But look at it from a manufacturer's standpoint. I make 10 lines of products. If 1 of them only sells 1 item a year, should I keep making them and supporting it? Or are my resources better spent focusing on the other 9?

From Zimbra's point of view...how many varieties of Linux are there? Which one's should we support? If one branch of our Linux software gets just a few downloads, shouldn't we pull those programmers and put them supporting an OS that's more heavily used?

It's a balancing act. If we build Zimbra for this version of an OS, very few people might download it. If we build Zimbra for a version of OS, it might become the hot item to have. If we don't build Zimbra for this version of OS, is that keeping people away from our product?

I say "we" generically of course...I don't work for Zimbra.

[tgx]

From Zimbra's point of view...how many varieties of Linux are there?

Too many to count actually and this will never change.

Which one's should we support?

That's seems to be a tough call, but I think the major FOSS ones are actually a short list.
If it's supported in VMware, I sure expect it to be working with Zimbra. Windows, might be a stretch on that list, but actually you probably should consider it at some point as well. Many opensource projects run on Windows also.

If one branch of our Linux software gets just a few downloads, shouldn't we pull those programmers and put them supporting an OS that's more heavily used?

I think if your community was really a community you could locate people to build the code for you and even have it hosted on mirrors for the various distros. You've not established a community, you have a userbase...there is a BIG difference.

If we don't build Zimbra for this version of OS, is that keeping people away from our product?

Absolutely it will. The question is are the numbers worth chasing.
I'm sure there are a lot of SuSE people that simply haven't discovered Zimbra yet, and without a build, they never will.

I just think it is bad timing to drop what is an OS on many peoples short list of great distributions, regardless of what the present statistics are telling you.